THE PHEE-NOM STARTS HIGH SCHOOL

1958

     I walked around with this feeling that great things awaited me, and were expected of me. I awakened every morning exhilarated by the prospect of being a great ball player, a big leaguer with his own baseball card who signed autographs and lived the life his father and those who reached the top experienced. I had recently turned 15 and not only held my own in American Legion ball between my freshman and sophomore years, but had discovered as I matured that I possessed what the assistant football coach and head baseball coach at Compton High, Ray Edgman, described as the quickest acceleration of any athlete in town, including the black kids who eventually beat me during the last few yards in the 100 yard dash in citywide track competition. I could steal bases and run between holes in football and elude tacklers—a gift that boosted my already bursting confidence.

     Coach Edgmon wanted me to play football, but Dad discouraged it, and in truth I had no stomach for the barbaric grind of the game that would threaten my knees as a future baseball hero. Instead I went out for basketball and was the only white kid to make the junior varsity, and right off I felt in over my head. The Compton High basketball team, its players culled from a huge population of kids, was the best in the state, and the coach, Bill Armstrong, was establishing himself as the Johnny Wooden of high school basketball and building a dynasty. One of the stars was big Marvin Fleming, a former basketball player of the year who would go on to win four super bowl rings for legendary coaches Vince Lombardi and Don Shula as a football tight end. His cousin, Roy Jefferson, was a starting forward on the JV basketball team and would go on to be an all pro wide receiver in the NFL and, like Marvin, win a super bowl ring.

     The guard I had to beat out, Freddie Goss, would go on to be the player of the year and start on a UCLA national championship for Johnny Wooden, and was already a varsity first string guard—a sophomore phee-nom!

     The black kids on the team, members of junior highs across town that thrashed us at Roosevelt, held an almost contemptible attitude toward me, implying it was their game, and I didn’t belong. The only kid on the team who seemed to have a friendly nature toward me was Loman Young, who, unlike the rest of the black kids, couldn’t jump, but, like me, could handle the ball and shoot. He was a junior. When the season started, Mr. Armstrong, who coached the JVs and varsity, played us only during “mop up” time after our team demolished everybody by 40 points. Loman and I, inglorious subs for the first time in our young athletic careers, sat together in the back of the bus during road games while the kids up front joked and shouted at each other, oozing victory adrenalin, ignoring us. Coach had already warned both of us that our JV team could beat most varsity teams in the area, and that our chances, even though he liked our games, were slim with more good players coming up through the junior high system—kids already seen as “blue chippers” for college careers.

     Loman had started as JV shortstop his sophomore year and informed me he was going to beat out a senior for shortstop. I quickly alerted him that I, too, was a shortstop and would beat both of them out. We began joking and joshing, picking on each other. Whenever we ate lunch at the benches just off the main quad, where racial tensions were already building, I over heard some white kids I’d known for years at Roosevelt, including Bowlin and Ron Bart, muttering “nigger lover” when they passed by.

     When my gorge rose, Loman clamped my arm. “Pay ‘em no mind, Dell. They’re too ignorant to know better.”

     “They used to be my friends, Loman.”

     “Used to be. Don’t need them kind of friends.”

     I had not told Loman or anybody that in government class there was a black girl named Jane who was very bright and studious and cute and laughed at almost everything I said and smiled at me with genuine warmth and allowed that smile to linger, and that I always waited for her to get up first at the end of class so I could walk behind her and marvel at her ass, which was unlike any ass I’d seen on any white girl and had me swallowing hard. There was no mixed dating on campus and if there were riots would be ignited instantly. At the lunch tables, Walter spotted me gawking at everything in a skirt, black, white or Mexican, these fully developed high school girls having changed my mind about not being a lover boy, though I’d never admit that to anybody, not even Loman, to whom I felt comfortable enough to tell anything.

     “I see you got your eye on the hot stuff.” He grinned, a very well-knit, fine-looking kid, perfectly groomed and dressed, from a family of many. “You ain’t about to get to first base with any of ‘em the way you dress, Norman.”

     “You keep callin’ me Norman, I’m gonna start calling you Amos.”

     “Lookin’ like you do, in them old man’s rags, ain’t no girl gonna give you the time of day, Norman.”

     “I ain’t a dandy like you, Amos. I don’t need fancy clothes to get me a woman.”

     “Shoot, you ain’t gonna get no woman the way you carry on, Norman. You need new rags, new ears, them rotted out fallin’ apart tennis shoes is gross, and that dumb-ass white-boy crew cut don’t look human when it grows out six months; looks like God done made you bald and glued up your skull and tossed a bunch-a hay on top. You need new hair, new attitude, new jumpshot…”

     “Amos, Norman’s gonna run circles around you when we go out for shortstop.You know how good I am? I played Legion ball at thirteen. A scout from the Boston Red Sox called my Dad and wants me to play winter ball with minor league professionals and college prospects. I’M a prospect!”

     He put down his soda pop. “You foolin’ with me?”

     “Nope.”

     “Then you best play, Mr. Ragman. You crazy if you don’t. Why you wanna play hoop when you the white flunky nobody pass to? If you good as you say you are, you got to go find out.”

     “What about you? You gonna stick it out and be the black flunky nobody passes to?”

     He laughed. “Think Mr. Cool Babe Young gonna get a head start, too, Mr. Ragman.” He clamped my forearm. “Gonna beat your sorry ass out.”

     (Next Sunday installment: Facing the big boys)